


who's left and who's leaving

by pocky_slash



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Background Relationships, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Male Friendship, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2014-12-06
Packaged: 2018-02-28 09:52:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2727914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hank stays. He doesn't have anywhere else to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	who's left and who's leaving

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sunsetdawn20](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunsetdawn20/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this! I've always been meaning to explore what's going on in Hank's head in that time after the school closes, so thank you for giving me the opportunity.
> 
> HUGE thank you to [redacted] for the last minute beta on this. You are AMAZING ♥

June is easy, which surprises Hank. The remaining students cry and hug the last lingering staff members. Charles smiles and waves and wipes tears and tells all of them that everything is going to be okay. A young girl, an empath of whom Charles is particularly fond, clings to his chair and wails and wails and wails and that's the only time Hank sees his stoic facade waver.

"It will all be alright, Candy," he tells her, petting her hair. "You'll be okay. Your mum and dad will take good care of you and you'll love your new school."

Her tears dry up suspiciously fast and she's off with her parents without any more fuss. Hank stares at Charles pointedly.

"I'm very tired, Hank," he says without looking away from the last of the departing cars.

They have one last staff dinner that night, and then there's a second round of goodbyes. Fewer tears this time--there's hardly anyone left. 

Hank closes the doors and rests his head against them. He can still hear the last car, Alice, the cook, driving off down the road. She'd offered to stay on, wagging her finger and reminding Charles he still needed to eat. Charles had smiled and shook his head and she'd left without another word.

When Hank turns around, Charles is already moving towards the elevator. Hank can feel his misery. He thinks all of New York can probably feel his misery tonight.

"Are you staying, then?" Charles asks without turning around.

"I am," Hank says. He wants to tell Charles that someone has to, that Hank is worried about him, but those words seem clumsy and awkward. "My lab is here," is what he says.

"Do what you'd like," Charles says, and disappears behind the closing elevator doors.

***

June is easy, yes, if you can call it that. Charles still comes down to breakfast in the morning and dinner at night. He stays in his office during most of the day, and Hank doesn't dare ask what he does. For his part, Hank works in the lab, works on the same old projects he's worked on before, as if all of this will be over any day now and the students will come back and he'll have proteges again.

July is easy in the same way as June and August is hot and sticky and heavy, but not hard.

September is hard.

The morning of what would have been the first day of the new term, Charles doesn't come down for breakfast. Hank sits in the kitchen until the tea's gone cold and then goes upstairs to make sure nothing's wrong.

Charles is still in bed. He's staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open, but makes no effort to move, or even acknowledge Hank.

"I made breakfast," Hank finally says.

"What's the bloody point?" he asks. "What's the bloody fucking point of any of it?"

Hank doesn't have a good answer. He closes the door and leaves Charles alone for the rest of the day.

***

Tuesday morning, Charles does make an appearance. He's wearing the same filthy housecoat he's worn all summer and his pajamas. For the first time, Hank realizes that it must have been months since he last cut his hair--it's a rat's nest and hanging in his eyes.

"Good morning," Hank says, and adds two more eggs to the frying pan.

"Is it really?" Charles replies.

When he thinks Hank isn't looking, he pours a measure of Scotch into his tea.

***

It's not that it isn't difficult for Hank--god, it is. Seeing Raven leave with Erik--well, it hurt Charles, of course. She was his sister. But Hank had hoped--

It was stupid. It was stupid to hope. It was stupid to imagine that he could be worthy of anyone when he couldn't see past his own issues. It was stupid to want to change her. He did to her the exact same thing every other person had done to him his whole life--judged her by what she looked like, by what he thought she was, without appreciating her mind, her humor, her wicked streak. How many times was he beat up on the playground by kids making fun of his feet or calling him teacher's pet? How many times did he tell himself the only reason girls didn't like him was because they were too shallow?

Hank was maybe the most shallow of all, the most demanding, the most controlling. He wanted her the way she pleased him, not the way she pleased herself.

He was nineteen and he was stupid, but her parting comment stings all these years later.

_Mutant and proud._

He thinks about it every time he injects himself with the serum to look human. It used to be just for parents, just for tours, but now that they don't have a staff, it's much more frequent. Someone has to go to town and get groceries. Someone has to make sure the bills are paid and the mail is taken in.

He wonders, when he's standing at the grocery store, waiting to check out, what all of these people would think if he became the beast. On his worst days, he barely quells the urge to find out. Or maybe those aren't the worst. Maybe the worst are the days that he realizes that he drove away the one person he could have talked to about these things.

He misses her. He barely got a chance to know her, and he misses her.

He thinks that Charles might understand that, at least. After the assassination… well.

_"I never want to hear his name again,"_ he had shouted at Hank and Alex, angrily rolling out of their staff meeting, their tiny group working so hard to build Charles' dream. He had been shaking, crying, and Hank still wonders why this is what broke Charles. Of all the things Erik had done--breaking his heart, his back, leaving him, taking his sister--this is the one that made Charles lose hope he could ever return.

He'd known Erik for the same amount of time that Hank had known Raven. He wonders if Charles looks back at it with the same nostalgia, rubbed soft around the edges, magical and strange. It felt like a lifetime. It was less than six months. Surely it wasn't enough time to fall in love, for either of them, but here they are.

***

It's nearing Thanksgiving when Hank wakes one morning to find Charles passed out on the couch in his office.

His office, once immaculate, has become piled with books and papers. He dumps the mail on his desk every day when Hank hands it to him. He knocks things over and doesn't bother to pick them up. He drinks and drinks and the bottles and glasses collect on every flat surface. 

It seems his mess has finally caught up with him. Hank traces Charles' path with his eyes--one of the wheels is jammed with a bottle that was on the floor. Charles clearly heaved himself from the chair to the sofa and then, rather than call Hank for help, he found another bottle to keep him company.

There's an anger, a jealousy, a longing that burns right under Hank's skin all the time. He's not interested in Charles, not in that way, but he did look up to him. He did admire him. He did think of Charles as a friend, and he had hoped Charles returned the feeling. It's been months that they've been on their own, and Charles barely speaks to him. He disappears whenever Hank comes into a room. He begs off of meals with headaches. He drinks himself into a stupor and here, trapped and alone, instead of calling to Hank for help, he found help inside a bottle.

Part of Hank wants to leave him. Not just in this room, on the sofa, but really leave him. He could go anywhere. Hank does the bills, he ran the school accounts--he can take enough money to set himself up somewhere and Charles wouldn't even notice. He could get away from this house and the misery that lives inside of it.

But where would he go?

He sits on the edge of the sofa and shakes Charles awake.

"Charles?" he says. "Charles."

Charles' eyes are murky when they open, clouded, wet, and sad. He's unshaven and his hair is long and ratty. He's wearing the same clothes he's been wearing for at least a week.

"Hank," he says, voice soft and plaintive. "Why won't they stop?"

Hank helps him sit up, frowning. He's not sure what Charles is talking about, but he's clearly still drunk.

"Do you want to go to bed or have something to eat?" Hank asks.

"I want them to _stop_!" Charles responds with a shout. "I want a moment's peace! I want--they're so _loud_!"

He pushes his hands against his ears--no. His temples. He's pushing his hands against his temples. It's his telepathy. The voices are his telepathy.

"I want to sleep, Hank," Charles says, dropping his hands to Hank's arm and squeezing it. "All of this--losing everyone, losing Raven, losing him--I want to fucking sleep and I can't even--they won't leave me alone!"

Hank whirls through a dozen possibilities--he could make a helmet like Magneto's. He could find whatever it is that blocks telepathy and coat a room in it, a quiet room. He could sedate Charles, inject him with something to help him sleep.

Then, he gets a better idea.

It's reckless and stupid and it might not work--he's only used the serum on himself and on a young boy with scales and heightened senses, but the boy informed Hank in the test that when the scales faded away, so did his heightened senses. Hank's own senses are dulled when he looks human, but he's still smart as he ever was. With Charles' more cerebral power, it might not work, but--

He stands up and rushes from the room to the kitchen. There, next to his coat and hat, is a case with a syringe in it. Hank uses one dose to control his mutation, to keep it just beneath the surface. To block it out completely for a short time, he'd need two.

For Charles, he takes all three.

Charles is slumped over again when Hank returns, hands jammed up against his temples, tears in his eyes. It's embarrassing. It's awful. Hank feels awful on Charles' behalf, that the man who wouldn't let them help him even from the bed to the wheelchair in those first fraught months after Cuba is now keeled over like this, so nakedly hurting.

"I'm going to help, Charles," Hank says, easing Charles into a seated position again. "I'm going to help. Hold on."

Charles is dead weight against him. It's easy to slip the needles into his pale skin, easy to see the bright veins beneath. One, two, three and the syringes are empty and Charles is slowly looking more aware of his surroundings. Hank keeps an arm around him, steadying him, as a different sort of cloudiness takes over his bright blue eyes.

He swallows and looks up at Hank.

"What did you..." he starts to ask. "It's...how did you get them to stop?"

"The serum," Hank says. "The serum I take to tame the beast. I thought it might--so it works? It quiets the voices?"

Charles nods slowly and closes his eyes.

"I--thank you," he says. "I don't know--how did I get here?"

"I don't know," Hank admits. Then, "I wish you had told me sooner. I could have helped. If I knew that's why you were in bed, that's why you were drinking."

Charles laughs at that. It's sharp and wet. There's no humor in it.

"Hank, my friend, I am in bed and drinking because my life is utter shite," he says. "I am in bed and drinking because the universe decided that what I needed wasn't hubris, but humiliation. I'm in bed and drinking because my lover crippled me and then left with my sister. I'm in bed and drinking because I tried to move past that, to accept that as my due. I tried to make something out of my life, something that could help others. I worked hard. I poured all of myself into it, all that was left. I thought it must have happened for a reason, that this is what I was meant for, the purpose I was looking for all those years. I gave it everything, everything!"

Charles isn't laughing any longer. He's shouting.

"I gave everything I could to this school and now it's gone. It's all fucking gone! The world is going to hell and I'm already there." 

He wipes angrily at his eyes.

"I am in bed and drinking because I have nothing left," he says. "My sister--my best friend. The man I loved. My legs. And now my bloody school. I have nothing left to give. I have nothing left at all."

Hank doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know what comfort to offer. He doesn't have any. That's why he's here, isn't it? He rose above the bullying, the strange looks, to pursue an education, to try and put something good into the world. He took a job with the government to help people. He went with Charles to give back. The school was as much his and Alex's and everyone else's dream as it was Charles'. And now what's left for either of them.

Charles leans over, his face covered by his hands. His shoulders hitch under Hank's arm. He's obviously crying. Hank wants to cry, too.

"You have me," Hank says quietly. He pulls Charles closer. "You still have me. I'm not going anywhere."

Where else, after all, Hank thinks darkly, is there left for him to go?


End file.
